If you define economics as have and have-not, they obviously had economics. Who are he to tell us that bartering didn’t happen on any scale within a tribe of cro magnom.

I think the point being is that economics is a large scale class system with fairly complex structures. There’s always been have and have-nots. Just look at a pride of lions on how they distribute the feeding based upon ranks within the pride. It’s not economics, but it’s s class based system with distributed means (i.e access to food).

So maybe all of nature is oppress or being oppressed in a way. We just industrialised it.